You have caught on to your partner's porn addiction, what are the next steps?

[admin]

For the Partners...help us draft this important article for new visitors to the site. Currently our Partner article section is severely lacking, and this is an important one. Please reply with your comments and ideas, they may be used verbatim on the site and you will get full credit for your contributions!

[cmperry]

Write a letter! that has been the most common advice that I have seen thus far, and in my situation the most helpfull. We may even want to start a letter writing tips thread.

[ShannonErin]

Write a Brutally honest letter and leave nothing out. and lay down the laws and tell him what you will and will not except in ur relationship

[jasmine]

Well, I will be uncharacteristically brief on this one: Get Counseling. Now. If you let too much stress and self-hate in, trust me, it is not harmless, and often has actual physical side effects that are not pleasant.

[FoolishMind]

Step 1: Write a letter / E-mail to your H / bf and explain in explicit detail how his PA is affecting him, you and your relationship. The letter needs to state that you will support him should he wish to change. But it must be clear that you can no longer accept being second to P.

Step 2: Make sure he uses TTF. If you do not see any changes in him within 2 weeks, or he still has not realised the affects of P. Re-read last sentence of step 1 and act on it.

Step 3: Respect yourself for who you are, and not what someone else wants you to be. Muster the strength and confidence in yourself to act out on what you believe you deserve.

[jasmine]

Oh, there's one more thing you should do: Seek to educate, not to punish.

I think many people, after catching on to their partner's porn addiction, feel the necessity to punish their partner, in a sense, by sabotaging the remnants of beauty and harmony in the relationship. I felt like I wanted revenge, to cheat on him, to scream at him, and sadly enough, I felt like it wouldn't even matter anyway, because the relationship was already gone. But that is one thing you should not do. You should not lose hope in your relationship.

Instead of punishing your partner, and this goes hand in hand with writing the letter, you need to educate your partner on the effects of pornography. I would suggest not only writing the letter, but also doing a little research together on the history of the mainstream pornographic industry. How, in one of the most conservative decades in the history of America, did pornography manage to steal the spotlight? How did it market itself into making people think it was socially acceptable? How does the industry treat its porn actors and actresses? And how bad is it? These are just questions to answer, and knowing these answers might enlighten your partner to the effects of porn use not only on you, but also on the rest of the world.

[FairyG]

I had thought there was nothing more to add to the letter and counselling suggestions, but I'd forgotten about looking at it from that angle...well said, Jasmine! The education of a PA as to the reality of their fantasy-world really does help both the PA and the relationship :)

[awo225]

Once you have realized your h/bf has a PA, I agree it is very important to get some kind of therapy for yourself! I was in a complete rage, and talking to a therapist helped me to sort out some of my emotions. I think it's really isolating to have this new perspective on your relationship-- getting support from my sisters or friends became complicated because it could 1) activate the protective mode in them and they could strongly advocate for me to leave (when I needed to think about it more and know whether this was the best thing to do) and 2) destroy their friendship/opinion of my husband if I decided to stay. Also, for me it is just plain humiliating to have this problem.

It was great to have this website, because I feel like I have a lot of labile emotions-- TTF is accessible 24 hrs a day.

"Confronting Your Spouse's Pornography Problem" by Ried and Gray was also helpful to me, and an easy read. I asked my husband to read it, too, because there are passages in the book that more clearly explain how I am feeling and why it is important for him to recognize and validate those feelings. I swear, sometimes I feel like I can hardly put a sentence together since I've found out about his PA.

[Abbie]

Not a nice thought, but it really should be mentioned that you need to decide what you are going to do. He/she needs to decide if they want to quit, and you need to decide if you can stay with them and support them through recovery.

A plan of action (sorry if I sound clinical here) should be agreed upon as soon as possible after a lengthy discussion of the options you both have, and any boundaries agreed upon.

[Moonbeamtag]

This is so frustrating...he absolutely refuses to look at this site. He is very angry that I am here, and thinks that I have some sort of mental disorder for being here. I find myself shaking my head alot.

I had not gotten to write my letter, when he actually wrote one to me, that I was obsessed with this and another site, and he thinks I need to get some help. Following that we had a 3 hour discussion, and now he is totally in silence, won't speak to me, feels that I " think so little of him ", and says that he is "hurt that I don't respect him"

Boy, what a confusing mess... I don't know if I should stay, or run like the wind !!!